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Our Simple Ads.txt Overview for 2020

Ads.txt is a digital tool created by the IAB Tech Lab Project to enable publishers to allow for a public declaration of the companies that are approved to sell their digital inventory.

Developed
to increase
transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem, Ads.txt provides publishers the control over the
end-to-end distribution of their inventory.

As a
result, Ads.txt works to eliminate counterfeit inventory (display, video and mobile ad units)
from being sold across the programmatic ecosystem.

According
to recent reports regarding Ads.txt adoption, more
than 70% of all publishers globally have adopted the standard.

How Does
it Work?

By
viewing a publisher’s Ads.txt file, prospective buyers will be in a position to evaluate
requests being sent to their buying platform from websites, which in turn aims
to raise confidence that the inventory they are seeking to purchase is 100%
authentic and non-fraudulent.

Publishers
put a file on their server that says exactly which companies they sell their
inventory through. The file lists
partners by name, but also includes the publisher’s account ID. This is the same ID buyers see in a bid
request, which they can use as a key for campaign targeting.

Buyers use a
web crawler to download all the ads.txt files and the information contained
within on a regular basis and use it to target their campaigns. This means buyers know that if they bid on
request that comes from an authorized ID, it’s coming from a source the
publisher trusts or has control over.

The
emergence of Ads.txt marks a milestone in the industry and provides empowerment
to publishers to take back control of who represents their inventory and brand.

Why You
Should Know About Ads.Txt

The fight
against fraud in the ecosystem appears be heating up as publisher adoption of
the tool is increasing. Though only time will time how the ecosystem will look
once both the Sell and Buy side integrate it into their products and processes.

From our
experience throughout the rollout of Ads.txt over the past two years, we noticed
that the big buyers & more and more buyers, in general, are not working
with Publishers that did not implement the Ads.txt file on their site. Case in
point, Google Display & Video 360 has defaulted to ads.txt inventory since
August 2019.

Next Steps

Implementing ads.txt onto your website is an important step to take as a publisher. Actually, adding it is not as hard either though you don’t have to go at it alone. We would be more than happy to assist you.

If you are having any issues implementing an Ads.txt file onto your website, you can contact us on the form below.